back to article Java or .NET bod in the Midlands? Congrats - you've got a DOUBLE DIGIT payrise

IT contractors are being treated to whopping great annual pay rises of up to 13 per cent, a survey has revealed. While the rest of the world makes do with rock bottom wages, tech bods working in the financial services sector are finding their pay packets shoot skywards due to heavy demand for their skills, according to the …

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  1. Buzzword

    If I were a central banker...

    ... I'd be worried now. Pay rises show up soonest in high-turnover job markets, of which IT contractors are the prime example. They really ought to be raising interest rates by now. It'll never happen though.

    1. Semtex451

      Re: If I were a central banker...

      It will, and sooner than Carney thinks.

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Trollface

      What, me worried??

      If I were a central banker...

      ... I'd be worried now.

      You clearly have no idea what central banking is about.

  2. James Gosling

    Undesirable?

    "The North West is another undesirable area where pay has jumped six per cent"

    Since when has the North-West been an undesirable area, Greater Manchester is thriving!

    Must be written by soft cotton wool headed Southerner!

    1. dogged

      Re: Undesirable?

      Perhaps he meant "area full of undesirables".

    2. wolfetone Silver badge

      Re: Undesirable?

      Are you sure they meant Manchester and not Barrow?

    3. David Barrett

      Re: Undesirable?

      Im in the north west, doesnt seem too far off the mark. :)

    4. Trollslayer

      Re: Undesirable?

      Manchester or London?

      London is good to visit but to live? No way!

  3. dogged

    DOUBLE DIGIT payrise

    trans: £11

    1. James 51

      Re: DOUBLE DIGIT payrise

      or 11p.

      1. wowfood

        Re: DOUBLE DIGIT payrise

        We're in an international market people. Clearly it's ¥11

  4. Paul Webb
    Boffin

    So, who wants to learn COBOL now?

    Is this demand for .NET and Java going to make it even more difficult to retrain people with these skills to look after all the big tin out there (as suggested by the article below)? Or will that retraining (eventually) lead to even better remuneration? Just curious.

    'Retiring greybeards force firms to retrain Java, .NET bods as mainframe sysadmins'

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/20/compuware_mainframe_retirements/

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Infrastructure ?

    Getting around the (West) Midlands is a real PITA, so you tend to find patches of scarcity simply because of travelling.

    Take for example, Leamington Spa at least one company there struggles to find and *keep* software engineers, because they can only really draw from south and east Brum. The travelling from anywhere further north is a nightmare, as is travelling north from Oxford.

    You can forget about any sort of public transport.

    I live in SW Brum, and used to work in Leamington. It was a 300 mile a week commute (so as petrol prices crept up, my pay decreased). When I left my boss stipulated that my replacement must live within 15 miles.

    1. Mark 65

      Re: Infrastructure ?

      Which is exactly why such companies and, in my opinion, most companies should become more flexible about how much time their workers need to spend on site. I've had many IT roles where one or two days a week would have been enough for large amounts of the year but it was a mandatory every minute of every working day spent onsite. 2014 and still the practicalities of IT are not being leveraged.

    2. theModge

      Re: Infrastructure ?

      Dev in SW Brum and suffering with abominable public transport? Consider me a fellow sufferer. I however have however resolved that with a push bike - not perhaps the stylish way one expects consultants to appear, but it works. Cycle to new street then trains go essentially everywhere. In fact it's only because dev's tend to live in nice bits of south brum that this is an issue: The nicest bits (arguable but I'd go with Harbourne and Mosely) are nowhere near a train. Live in Selly Oak \ North Field and the station tends to be walkable...

      Driving in the rush hour is a terrible thing to have to do I would agree and most development work could be done from the comfort of home as well; though there's something to be said for being able to talk to the people you work with.

    3. Jim 59

      Re: Infrastructure ?

      300 miles a week... so you lived 30 miles from work. A fair trek for a permanent job, for contracting not so much.

      1. noominy.noom

        Re: Infrastructure ?

        @Jim 59

        I concur that 300 miles/week doesn't sound like a big deal. I realize that state side distances are greater, but 100 miles/day is common and 300 miles/day is not unknown. This is for permanent jobs. For contractors the airports are more common.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Infrastructure ?

      I live in Leamington Spa. Which company? Codemasters?

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  6. Ian Ringrose

    I used to be a contractor based in Cambridge and now live in Stockport (North West). The current contract rates in the North West are so low that it is hardly worth anyone becoming a contractor.

    Part of the issue is that there is no critical mass of demand, so contractors have to travel a long way.

    If you have to stray in a B&B way not go south and get better rates….. All the contractors I know based in the North West spend a lot of their time working away from home – in the south most contractor spent most of their time working within reasonable travel distance of their home.

  7. Stevie

    Bah!

    I used to do a daily round trip of over 200 miles on one contract. I lived in Coventry and worked just up the road from Centre Point.

    No problem on British Rail, only an hour trip each way, and affordable too. Nice ride out with tea and a sausage batch to start me day, and an easy ride back with a drink. If it had been in the days of laptops and Wi-Fi I'd have been able to get loads of stuff done too.

    These days I do 80-some miles a day on the Long Island Rail Road, a fraught and expensive fiasco, with a nice train delay and missed connection to start me day and a concussion each way from being slammed around by the trains speeding over poor trackwork. And when I say "speeding" I'm talking about 1/2 the speed typically clocked by that Coventry or London bound BR electric, aka "lollygagging".

    But then, I hear you lot allowed that nice Mrs Thatcher to sell off the railway to rich pals who let it all go to the dogs.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Mark Ruit

      Re: Bah!

      Going to the dogs? That must be Crufts then, but the srvice is anything but crufty.

      If going to the dogs means timetable speed ups, track and ride improvements, bottleneck reductions and improved on-board faciliries, then perhaps the LIRR needs to go the same way?.

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